Under the Neomoon

By Wolfgang Hilbig

An abandoned construction site. Glowering pits and furnaces. A lone man in a bungalow. Widely considered to be one of the great German writers of the twentieth century, Wolfgang Hilbig’s dark visions have long held readers aloft with their musical language and uncompromising vision of the modern world. In Under the Neomoon, his debut short story collection originally published in East Germany in 1982, Hilbig’s persistent fixations—factory pits, rampant nature, and split identities—are at their most visceral and brilliant. Rendered into English by Hilbig’s longtime translator Isabel Fargo Cole, these short tales apply fluorescent language (“garlands of cast-iron flowers,” “tall dark-green water grasses”) to lives and spaces of foreclosed dreams. 

An electric collection that evokes the works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingeborg Bachmann, Under the Neomoon is a neon-bright reminder of humanity’s folly and the importance of storytelling from down below, where the workers toil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Two Lines Press
• Release date: Jun 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9781949641622

Wolfgang Hilbig

Wolfgang Hilbig (1941–2007) was one of the major German writers to emerge in the postwar era. Though raised in East Germany, he proved so troublesome to the authorities that in 1985 he was granted permission to emigrate west. The author of over 20 books, he received virtually all of Germany’s major literary prizes, capped by the 2002 Georg Büchner Prize, Germany’s highest literary honor.

Book preview

I

BREAKING LOOSE

It was summer, and all summer long, there were days when I fretted at being late out of bed, late to put my shirt and pants on, late to leave the house, so late that it barely refreshed me, but why should it, the morning chased away my weariness every day when it wasn’t yet too late, so late that I’d wearied by the time it drew toward noon again, and it seemed to go too slowly for me, walking down my path. At the end of the path I reached an old dead canal arm that beckoned me onward, but maybe I never did reach it, because I was walking forever, all summer, sometimes too slow, sometimes so fast that I broke out in sweat when I lingered in spots that the sun struck with full force, and even at a brisk walk I felt the ground grow hot in this summer, I felt it in the burning of my bare soles standing on the scarce stones grown hot on the firm-trodden ground. But did I really linger, didn’t I hurry onward, day after day, each time I faltered in the middle of the path as though I’d forgotten something. O misfortune, O ill humor, how oh-so-sure was I of my remaining, of my silence, of the beckoning of that old canal arm, ground broken years ago. Ah, did I really linger in that hot place near what I called the house, sometimes inside that abode when I never left the house, sometimes in the grass, prodigious in its growth, and sometimes on the clay bank, dry and fissured, hard as glass shards, down below, where the water line had fallen. Often enough there was nothing I lacked, but often enough certain things seemed forgotten, but no, often enough I lacked for nothing, when my forgetfulness grew prodigiously. Sometimes, ah, all too often, I had to take a rest, the haste, the hustle flickered in my veins, the grass and the thickets that I called riotous, that line my path and incubate their shadows where the dew lasts till noon, till at noon the heat sinks down and in its vapor the riotous reaches of the wild cherry trees loom over me, an imagined vapor that shuts my eyes when I doze off, fatigued and drenched and sleepy in this green vapor of the hot dew that had long oppressed me. Whenever I’m here, and I’m here all summer long, I’m enticed by those thickets, I ought to plunge in, sleep, and forget what I might be lacking, the things I might need on my way, a hundred yards long. I lacked for nothing, and I couldn’t wait, when I hurried onward, cajoling myself in unfinished sentences and devouring my breath, couldn’t wait for the next day, when it was morning, not noon, to tell myself, today, why not today, go tranquil and good-humored down to the boat, then down the canal, then out on the lake, and never have to turn around. But whenever I lingered, still buoyant, as though it were early in the morning, the dew and the thickets resisted my haste, before I was fully asleep it was noon, when I woke I thought it was evening, each time I beheld, then forgot, my prosperity in the fading light, and enfeebled and weary, weary of my wrath and weary of my malice, weary of my misfortune, I plunged down on the ground to rest, and on I went, all night long, vowing not to be idle, not to linger, not to forget. Still dreaming I started out, having barely dozed off I reached the canal bank, saw the boat on the bank, saw that it had sprung a leak, its planks dried and rotted long ago. And I beheld my prosperity in the nocturnal light, and vowed to set fire to the shack where I lived, in the morning, once I was rid of my weariness, fire to free myself from the alcohol of this summer and the books I’d brought with me, fire, once I’d recovered, kindling the bed and the books I no longer read, fire kindling my prosperity’s clothes closet, fire transforming the planks of my walls and furniture into thickets of fire. But in the morning, when I woke, I was too tired, or I’d forgotten. Before coming here, I’d wearied of a prosperity where hulking old married women leaned out their windows in the morning waiting for the postwoman, I hated being where I was when it was summer, summer when the refrigerators wound themselves up, regular as automatic clocks, incensing me, and when the feather beds draped over the windowsills made shapes I admired, and when the bogus carpets were beaten in the yards until the noise incensed me. Ah, no. I wanted to leave, to come here, I wanted to go in rags from sheer grief. I barely remember, it was as though my grief incensed me so much that I made everything into money, as much money as possible, grabbing it and hiding it on my person, so much that I took my books and came here, where I pondered, and waited to feel better to start out across the lake. Have I forgotten something. Ah, here, all this summer, there are days I wake up thinking: now, this very morning, this day or never, this very summer. Until I decide it’s too soon, or too late, until the sun, weariness, ignorance assails me. And I had a great yearning for a different prosperity, for the mild climate of other shores I still saw in my sleep, just as I’d known them, the snow-white houses of Obereselsrück, Canaan’s green hills covered with peppermint, and in front of them, behind them, plains veined by tranquil rivers, have I forgotten something, a great yearning for money, for slow books with no plot, for gray skies, for skies raining down on cattle herds. No, I wanted to stop talking, to start being silent, but I forgot, yes, I wanted to bark and howl like a dog, grunt and sing like a hippopotamus, but linger no longer in this eloquent wasteland. It’s a thicket that molders and collapses in the fall, that shoots up from the mud in spring, I call it riotous. It’s that crippling truncated canal, ground broken, started and broken off years ago, left in the lurch by its dredgers, allegory of all unfinished work, allegory of all broken starts, dead-ended in a thicket of work, its mounds of clay and gravel that refuse to find a home here, the subterranean soil, pierced by young grass and prodigiously laid waste to. By this dwindling water in which my boat is rotting. Have I forgotten something. I’m so sure of my remaining, of my silence here, that I never begin it. I have forgotten, it smells of our origin. Of rushes, it smells of origin and birth beneath this out-gushing sun, it smells of origin, of alcoholic summer, of birth and return through that hot place in my sleep. If I woke up at last, I’d find my way down, the boat would still carry me, I’d forget to return, I’d break out, leave everything here behind to escape.

BUNGALOWS

Bungalows, that’s what they call these shabby cabins made of timber-framed pressboard painted green, standing behind the inn, next to the forest. A coworker who’s usually away shares one of these cabins with me; the rest are empty; at the end of the summer most of the staff decamped to the city, so I’m almost always alone here. What’s there to do after dinner, when I always end up eating too much; I go outside, melancholy body heavy as stone, cigarette clamped between my lips, down the sandy path around the inn through the garden to the lake, and out on the dock to gaze into the fog and the dark. It’s dark by seven, over the water the air is brisk, but still not too chilly for me, I’m used to the cool evenings. There’s no wind, the shadow of a small boat lies rigid by the dock, the sky holds just a few stars, a hint of the moon somewhere, ahead of me I can’t see far, fog towers inert over the motionless black water.

O what a fall this is. From the lit window in the inn’s top floor, laughter drifts into the garden, the same as every evening there’s a party going on. It doesn’t bother me, I’ve got no cause to go up there. Still, I turn to look back through the garden, empty but for the mighty chestnut trees, garden chairs and tables long since stowed away; a ray of light slips out the window, lost in the crowns of the chestnuts looming in front, black with gleaming edges; there’s just a faint light in the garden, but I see the leaves falling slowly from the trees.

O what a fall, even the days in the still-warm sun grow foggier the earlier the afternoons end, cottony white vapor rises from the water; these afternoons there are hardly any guests, even now all they see is bleakness, the winter bleakness of this place, and I idle away the afternoons, waiting for the evenings when panic approaches. In the winter this will be a place of icy cold, the city far away; by then I hope to have ended my feud with the couple who run the inn and escaped back to the city. By day I go barefoot, a good feeling in the cool sand; after dark, flimsy rubber sandals protect my feet from the dry chestnut husks that lie around in masses, I hear my sandals rustle in the leaves, the yellow leaves that fall in the daytime faster and faster, in the daytime when the sun still shines but the fogs grow more dogged; in the hours of light the lake is bright blue, with flocks of black ducks floating on the water by the rushes. But now it’s dark.

Bungalows. I remember all the stories I used to read about hunters and explorers in Africa. With ink drawings. The bungalows in those drawings would be standing at the edge of the primeval forest, flat roofs jutting over open verandas, longish buildings, whitewashed, with sturdy wooden shutters, verandas propped, in the manner of stilt dwellings, on thick wooden piles, the inhabitants posing in front in their pith